Transaction processing environments such as call centers enable routing of customer transactions (e.g., telephone calls) to agents for handling the customer's request. An automatic call distributor (ACD) is typically used to queue the calls and subsequently route them to agents subject to implementation specific rules when availability permits. For example, an ACD may route telephone calls to agents based on information about the originating telephone number in accordance with a set of rules.
The ACD may incorporate other components such as touch tone menu or interactive voice response (IVR) systems to enable callers to direct themselves to the appropriate agent by proceeding through a series of selection menus in response to voice or touch tone commands. The prompts, selections, and routing rules for telephone callers are typically defined through a script or call control table in the ACD.
Numerous other mediums are available for communication including electronic mail, facsimile transmissions, cellular telephones, and internet and intranet web browsing. ACDs and other communications systems may similarly incorporate media-specific components for handling routing of communications for one or more of these other types of communication mediums. Each type of media is often handled by its own system. Accordingly, each type of communication medium typically has a unique method for configuring and delivering the prompt and collecting the caller's response. Thus a communication system capable of handling multimedia communications may have a variety of media-specific applications for configuring the prompts, selections, and routing rules.
One disadvantage of having distinct applications for configuring and delivering the prompts is with respect to modification and maintenance of the prompts and routing rules consistently across multiple communication mediums. Modifications may not be promulgated to provide a consistent user interface across all mediums at the same time. Manually maintaining each media-specific component with a separate application typically also increases the exposure to implementation errors. Thus the use of distinct media-specific applications to independently handle the routing and menu system for each communication medium may result in errors or inconsistencies in implementation across the different mediums.